This invention relates to radio alerting devices, for example to paging receivers of the kind which can be carried on the person of a user. Customarily, such receivers are small enough to fit into a shirt pocket, or to be clipped to the belt holding up a person's trousers. These devices generally include a casing containing a radio receiver of appropriate design, with a power supply, an antenna and a signalling means, and on the casing some form of fastening means for attaching the casing to another body, usually to an article of clothing worn by the user.
Heretofore, the fastening means has been attached in a fixed relation to the casing, with the result that the orientation of the casing relative to the body of a user has been fixed by the orientation of the fastening means on the clcothing of the user. If a paging receiver attached to a user's belt become uncomfortable when the user assumed a sitting position, the receiver might be shifted to another location, or removed from the user's clothing and placed in a pocket or on a table, for example, but it would be difficult, if not impossible, to adjust the receiver for comfort in the same location.
The shape of radio paging receivers has resembled generally the shape of a cigarette package, perhaps because that shape has evolved with time as having convenient dimensions for an article intended to be carried in the pocket of a person's clothing. That shape is characterized by length and width dimensions which are approximately the same, or at least closely similar, and only the thickness dimension is radically different, being substantially smaller than either of the length and width dimensions. Using similar length and width dimensions, there would not be any advantage in changing the orientation of such a receiver relative to the body of a user.